


Lockbox

by Nimravidae



Category: American Revolution RPF, Turn (TV 2014)
Genre: 6k and they hold hands once, Amnesia, Car Accidents, Established Relationship, M/M, Memory Loss, Relationship Strain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-15
Updated: 2018-06-15
Packaged: 2019-05-23 14:33:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14936117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nimravidae/pseuds/Nimravidae
Summary: After a devastating car accident, Benjamin Tallmadge can't remember graduating college, meeting the love of his life, or getting engaged--in fact, he can't remember anything from the last nine years.





	Lockbox

George let's Ben in before he sets the bags down and turns on the light.

From the outside, Ben had been a little shocked when they pulled into the driveway of a quaint little ranch-style house. He’d spend the drive back from the hospital leaning his forehead against the window of George’s car, watching exits and streets and houses whiz by wondering which one was theirs. Each one just as likely as the last, and Ben was too busy trying to distract himself from George’s droning in the driver’s seat. It was just things about the house, things he’d already talked about. Three bedrooms, George had said, but one they’d turned into a duel office. A big kitchen, a garden, one of those big bathrooms with a soaking tub that apparently Ben just could never get enough of. He described each room in detail, but Ben didn’t have a single reference to stick to the words George said. So he sat, quietly, watching homes pass and itching at his bandages. 

_ “The doctors said not to scratch the cuts on your head too much,”  _ George had chided, those chilling blue eyes flickering over to him once or twice. Ben had let his hands fall into his lap, and just resigned himself to picking at his nails and trying to see if he could remember which one of these houses he lived in. 

Of course, he didn’t recognize it when they pulled up, and he doesn’t recognize it standing in the entryway. 

It is nice though, he figures. There’s a living room to his right, and dining nook that leads into a kitchen to the left. A hallway lined with doors. It’s all hardwood, except where there’s tile in the kitchen and, according to George, carpeting in the bedrooms. George gives him the same expectant look he had for a solid week after Ben woke up in the hospital. The same sort of  _ maybe this time  _ that only made Ben feel like he might throw up his meds. 

Again. 

But he doesn’t recognize the couch, or the overstuffed wingback, or the pile of papers on the coffee table covered in red pen-marks and his own handwriting. He doesn’t recognize anything, and out of the corner of his eye he sees George’s face crumble just a little. 

He doesn’t remember a day in the hospital where George’s face didn’t, though. The first time Ben asked  _ “who are you?”  _ or the third time he confused him for another stranger instead of his fiance. It always fell back down from hope to devastation. As though they hadn’t been at it for almost nine days by now. 

“I’ll bring your bags to the guest bedroom, okay? Or if you’d like the master, I can sleep in the guest. All of your things are still in our bedroom, but you can go get whatever you want, or I can bring them out to you. It doesn’t particularly matter to me.”

That doesn’t seem quite fair. Shoving George out of his own private space. Even if, hypothetically, it’s Ben’s too. He shakes his head, ignoring the way George says  _ our _ . “Guest bedroom is fine. I mean, it’s not like I’d notice either way, right?” 

It’s a poor attempt at humor, and it shows. George’s lips curl to a tight frown and his voice get’s suddenly stiff. “Right.” Ben doesn’t know if it’s characteristic or not, but it still rubs him the wrong way. “The guest room is the first door on the left. The one right after it is the bathroom. All the way at the back on the right would be me, then.” 

Soon after, he vanishes down the hallway, leaving Ben to peruse at, apparently, his own discretion. It took close to nine days in the hospital, a mess of MRI’s and testing his reflexes, and asking him questions, and watching his walking, before he’d been allowed to freely walk the distance from the front door to George’s--well, both of theirs--kitchen. It’s a nice little thing, better than any that Ben can actually remember, all spotless granite countertops and polished wooden cabinets. So he takes full advantage of his newfound freedom, idly poking through cabinets and drawers, totally unsure of what he’s looking for. He finds some things, he thinks, that are proof that maybe he does live here. A mostly-empty box of his favorite cereal in the pantry, the fact that George was listed as his emergency contact, a mug he remembers buying when he was just accepted into Yale drying on the dishrack. 

But there’s other things, too. Things he knows aren’t a part of him. A coffee grinder with a bag of Blue Bottle beans just slumped against it, as if Ben would ever even consider blowing thirty-five bucks on coffee that he’s got to grind himself. But just a few steps away, he finds himself at the fridge, staring at one of the same photos George had brought in on that third day Ben was awake. The day after they were sure he’d lost his memory. 

He recognizes himself, in a way. He’s got the same sandy hair, the same pointed face, the same lank body, but it’s all wrong. He doesn’t remember going to Paris, he doesn’t remember George’s arms wrapped around him. He just...doesn’t remember. On some instinct he picked up halfway through his recovery, his right hand draws itself over to his left, brushing down the length of his ring finger. He always half-expects something to be there.

Of course, he doesn’t know what, but it never is.

“Are you alright, Ben?” George appears at the entryway to the kitchen and Ben nearly jumps out of his skin. For such a big guy, he’s got a light step.

He clears his throat once, to give himself time to soothe back the rabbit-paced tattoo of his heartbeat. He doesn’t look at George, he  _ can’t  _ look at George. “Fine. ‘M fine. My head hurts though. And don’t, don’t call me Ben. It’s Benjamin if I don’t know you.”

“Right.” The warmth is sapped from George’s voice again, replaced by a shallowly-disguised pain. “Benjamin, my mistake. You’re about due for your medicine. You’re supposed to take--”

“The blue ones with food twice a day and the white ones every eight hours. I know. I was there.” Something in the air shifts, and Ben feels the ice in his voice more than he hears it. There’s a click, as George sets down the bottle.

He gives a sort of deep-lung sigh, like he’s steeling himself for something, behind him again and Ben just, he can’t look at him. He can’t look at him and see the same man who sat dutifully in his hospital bed, looking more and more broken each time Ben ran his fingers over some picture or some treasured memento and couldn’t remember a damn thing about it. His supposed partner of the last six years. George looked exhausted, more worn and tired than he did in any photo George dropped into his lap. 

It’s too hard to look at, knowing that it’s pretty much all Ben’s fault anyway.

“Go lay down, I’ll bring you something to eat.” 

Snatching up the bottles, Ben makes his way to the room. His bags are on the bed, he didn’t have much in the hospital but he’s got at least one stuffed full of “Get Well Soon” cards and stuffed animals and blankets and pictures. It’s not a terribly big space, a queen-sized bed, a dresser that’s got a few piles of clothes and a pair of reading glasses on top. 

There’s a suitcase full of other, optional, clothes he could be wearing instead of what he’s currently wearing. There’s a duffel bag they rescued from the back of his car. Apparently he was on his way to a friends for the weekend, just a get-away or something. Either Nate didn’t go too much into depth when he was explaining, or Ben was too strung-out on painkillers to remember.He does know that asked about the clothes he was brought in in at the hospital, but apparently they were too mangled and bloodied to bother with. 

The pile of cards is thick, crammed into a couple manila envelopes. Carefully, by George and haphazardly by Ben. They’re all signed by people he guesses he’s supposed to know, all added in little messages and prayers. Some of them are really over-sized, filled with upwards of thirty signatures each. He guesses those are from the students he’d been told he teaches. Pulling himself onto the bed, he flips through one or two of the cards before shoving them back into the bag they came from. What’s the point of reading them if he doesn’t even know who they’re from? 

Looking through them at the hospital already felt like playing some part in a play. Feigning out the emotions he thinks he’s supposed to have to people who might as well have been plucked off the streets. It was exhausting there, and it’s exhausting here. And for a moment, he really wishes it isn’t real. Like some long practical joke Nate’s pulling on him, like when he looks into the mirror again he won’t see the beginnings of wrinkles and start of gray hairs. He won’t see the worn-down look of himself, the softness of his belly, and the new broadness of his chest. He won’t open a a duffel bag supposedly filled with all his favorite clothes and see sweater-polos instead of graphic tees and basketball shorts. Like maybe he’ll close his eyes and open them again and be back where he  _ remembers  _ being. Back in his dorm, with Nate bringing beer he convinced his older brother to buy for them, pretending to study while trying to make baskets in the trash with their emptied cans. 

Not here. Not in a house that’s supposedly his, with a stranger a room away cooking him dinner and saying he’s in love with him. 

George is not in love with him. George doesn’t even know him.

Ben’s not the least bit careful as he kicks the bag of clothes off the bed and lets it scatter across the floor. It doesn’t matter how many times George laid out the whole story of how they met, or relives the tale of how they got engaged, or answers question after question until Ben can’t think of a single thing to ask him. He doesn’t remember accidentally stealing George’s drink in a crowded coffee shop, he doesn’t remember spitting it immediately into the nearest trashcan because green tea lattes are disgusting. But George does. George remembers Ben looking up, he remembers holding out the right drink to him, he remembers asking if Ben was okay. 

It’s not fair. It’s not fair that he gets to know everything and Ben’s left with nothing. 

He doesn’t keep track of how much time he spends staring at the wall, curled up on the bed, but eventually George knocks softly. Apparently, he takes Ben’s low grunt as permission enough to come in, and Ben swears it’s only the smell of food that wasn’t churned out of a hospital cafeteria that makes him roll over. It smells familiar, but not in any way that links him to this place. It smells like being a child again, like long winters inside and his mother stirring a pot in the kitchen while he and his brothers elbowed each other for the first go at it. 

“I thought potato leek soup would be best,” George says, cradling a bowl in one hand and a glass of water in the other, “it’s your favorite, but you know that.”

Ben huffs because he’s mad and he’s mad because George is right. Every late fall and winter, his mother painstakingly made it from scratch. She sent Ben with batches of it frozen to school with him, ready to be thawed and microwaved in his dorm. It was his comfort food, the thing he dug into when finals finally got to him or when that kid in his Intro to US History lecture turned out to be straight, or when he was just plain homesick. His go-to to feel good, and here George was, wielding it. Like a fucking bandaid to his broken brain. 

And, you know what? Ben doesn’t want it. His stomach, gurgling and churning, might. But he doesn’t. 

“No it’s not,” he lies. And he doesn’t know why he lies, except he does. It’s like digging fingers into bruises to check if they still hurt, like picking scabs until they bleed--he wants to see that taken-aback look on George’s face again. Wants to see him squirm and sigh and set both things down on the table.

“Take your medicine,” is the only thing he says before he withdraws, shutting the door firmly behind him.

Good, Ben thinks to himself, glaring at the offending wood of the door. Just good. 

They fight more than they do anything else. Or, well, Ben tries to fight. George never rises to the bait; he never snaps and yells; he never storms out and slams the door. He just breathes in deep through his nose and politely excuses himself from everything. Awkward breakfasts where Ben refuses to eat because  _ who the hell does George think he is making his coffee and eggs the way he likes them,  _ or late nights with Ben curled as far as he can on the opposite side of the couch from George, muttering answers to Jeopardy questions under his breath and pointedly shooting glares across the foot-and-a-half between them because  _ see, he’s not fucking stupid, George.  _ Or when Ben tries to trash the last of his pain meds and George fishes them out and insists that he’ll only be mad at himself when he needs them later.

But he’s just so damn tired of it all. 

He’s tired of Nate swinging by and sitting in his bedroom with him, prodding with poorly-disguised questions more than just catching up. He’s tired of George’s friends showing up and giving George those pity-ridden looks, then pressing their lips together in thin lines whenever Ben has the audacity to walk past them in the kitchen. It makes his skin crawl, and he’s almost certain it’s because of the harsh judgement in their eyes. But he takes that rage and presses it down, solidifying it into a ball in his gut, something to tap into later when they’re alone. 

Like when he throws the photo album at the wall one evening after dinner because he still doesn’t remember a single goddamn trip, even after an entire month spent holed up in his own house. Sure, like the doctors suggested, he remembers spots and faces. Some flashes of feelings, some distant tunes that get stuck in his head but that he can’t remember the words to. They circle each other, Ben seething and George holding up his hand, trying to placate. 

“Jesus Christ, George, I’m only trying to get back ten years of memories here,” he snaps, snarling red-hot in his so-called-fiance’s face when George, more tensely than ever, had asked him to calm down. A rather subdued response to someone hurling a book at the living room wall.

“Nine.”

“What?”

“You’re trying to get back  _ nine  _ years of memories, Benjamin. You’re twenty-nine years old, you’ve lost nine years and four months of your memories. Not ten.”

“Right. My bad, because you know more about me right now than I do, right?” 

He can see the ‘yes’ building on George’s tongue and he doesn’t know why he knows he’s going to say it but he knows. He just knows. He waits, hands balled into fists at his side, whole body wracked with this mottled, frustrated rage. But George doesn’t say it. He turns on his heel and storms back into his bedroom. And Ben pushes out a breath that hitches, just once, and touches his left hand again, wishing again he could remember what he’s missing. 

He paces the living room once, then twice, trying his damndest to think of something, anything that he can remember from before the accident. But no matter how hard he tried, there was nothing. He can’t remember meeting George, he can’t remember their first kiss, their first night out, their first anything. He can’t remember seconds or thirds or hundredths. And it’s not his fault, it’s not his fault but he can’t stop that swelling guilt rising in his gut every morning when he hears George toiling away in the kitchen alone. He can’t stop that bile that rises and tastes like regret whenever they stand too close and every nerve in his body screams to reach out and  _ touch.  _

But he doesn’t because he can’t, because even when he tries and gets as close as he lets himself, he just can’t.

He knows he found George attractive, he knows he  _ finds  _ him attractive. He can’t stop sneaking glances sometimes, when George forces Ben to sit across the table from him for dinner. He watches the line of his arms, the curve of his shoulders, traces up his chest to where George fixates down on something else, letting the quiet simmer around them. Ben always snaps his eyes away, though, whenever George glances his way. 

There’s nothing he can do in this moments, though. Nothing that makes sense, nothing that connects with who he is compared to who he is, apparently, supposed to be.

He can’t pull himself up on his toes to kiss a stranger.

He can’t rest his head on a some random guy’s shoulder.

He can’t lock hands with someone he doesn’t know. 

He can’t do anything he’s supposed to do, nothing that even mimics what he figures their life used to be. 

No matter how nice George is all the time. No matter how much he waits on Ben hand and fucking foot. No matter how patient he is, explaining over and over and over and  _ over  _ again that he knows all the things he does about Ben because they’ve been together so damn long. But Ben doesn’t. He just doesn’t. He can’t. Everything he knows, everything he thinks he knows is lingering there just out of reach of his fingertips and he can feel it straining against his skin, pulling at his muscles as his body tries to re-teach his brain where things are and where he needs to go. 

He squeezes his ring finger again. And he can’t even explain it. He can’t, he just can’t and George doesn’t understand that. Does he? 

No, no, Ben tells himself. He could go back to his room, slam the door shut and lock himself away for rest of the night like he has every night for the past month. Instead, he wrings his hand together and pours himself back down onto the couch, as once again the living room becomes the living room instead of the boxing ring Ben keeps trying to turn it into. There are pictures scattered across the floor in the little dining nook, but as long as they stay hidden by the back of the couch Ben doesn’t think he’ll have another meltdown. Maybe.

Drained and exhausted, he snatches a throw pillow and curls over onto his side. He sniffs once, maybe twice as George’s words ring in his head.  _ You’re twenty-nine goddamn years old.  _ But he’s not. Or he is, but he just, he can’t think of any lessons he’s learned between the accident and the last day of his life he remembers. But, he is 29. He’s got a job, he’s got friends, he’s got a fiance. His brain can’t sort out the knotted mess of emotions and thoughts, so he opts to just lay there instead. 

He doesn’t realize how obscured he is by the couch until he hears the footsteps behind him. For a second, his heart seizes up into his throat and he swears it’s got to be George coming back for a fight that Ben just decided he doesn’t want anymore. 

“His door was closed, I think he’s in his room,” George sighs, steps leading him away from the couch. Ben doesn’t hear anyone else, and, a quick peek over the top confirms he’s got his phone pressed against his ear. “I swear, Martha, I don’t know what to do anymore. No, I’ve been working from home for the past few weeks, I don’t like leaving him alone. I usually just call Nathan when I have to go into the office, have him be with him. It’s not that I don’t trust him or I’m worried he’ll hurt himself. I’m just concerned I’ll come back and he’s packed up and taken off. It’s like...it’s like he’s...” He huffs something that Ben swears might be a laugh. He doesn’t know, he hasn’t actually heard one from him yet. “Yeah, like he’s twenty. I know, I know what the doctor said.” Martha. Ben knows Martha. 

Or at least he thinks he does, if it’s the same Martha that sometimes sits at their kitchen table, her hands clutching George’s while they whisper together when they think Ben isn’t nearby. She’s never as cold as the other people George knows, but whenever she looks at Ben, with her sharp eyes and welcoming smile.  _ “Are you feeling well today, Benjamin?”  _ She’d ask, gentle enough that if she’s got an underlying motive, Ben can’t find it. 

“It’s like he’s an entirely different person. I just don’t know him anymore...I don’t know, but all he does is push and push and pick fights over how I made his breakfast...yes, because I made it the way he likes it and he doesn’t like the idea that I know things about him. How am I supposed to help that?” 

_ Oh _ .

That’s all he can think, is oh. He grips the pillow until his knuckles go white. There’s bile rising and burning in the back of his throat and he’s suddenly very, very certain that he’s going to puke. But he can’t stop listening. He can’t make himself known, cough or shift or clear his throat or do  _ anything  _ to let George know he was there.

“He doesn’t want to talk to me, at least not like he used to. Martha...” He breaks off, voice cracking around the edges. He’s quiet for so long that Ben thinks he might have just hung up, or she did, or something else happened that made the silence settle over them. “I miss him so much, which is ridiculous because he’s right there but it’s not  _ him _ .”

Ben almost creeps up to leave. Almost. But, when George talks again, he sounds devastated.  _ Ruined _ . Like whatever shred of hope he’d been clinging onto since Ben’s car was T-boned and he woke up missing nine years of his life was finally snapped. “I don’t know what I’ll do if he doesn’t get better, Martha. I won’t give up on him, but this isn’t the man I asked to marry me.”

It’s the sort of thing that maybe, if Ben were a better person, he’d have realized much much earlier. But he didn’t, and now it’s definitely far too late. If he hears their goodbyes, he doesn’t processes them at all. Not until the footsteps fade back down the hall and back to George’s room. No, no, back to  _ their  _ room. It was theirs first. Ben and George’s. He tries to get himself used to that thought, but it doesn’t quite settle in. 

So he picks himself up instead, freeing the pillow from his vice-grip and carefully tip-toeing around the couch. George had moved all the photos he’d knocked from the album from the floor and set them in a loose pile on the table. Ben slides the topmost one towards himself. He’d already looked at it so many times - he could practically memorize the slope of the mountain behind them, the way his head tips to the side, the shadow of his hat and the line of his tan. George said they were in Utah, he’d gone for some business trip and Ben had tagged along to make a weekend out of it. A spur-of-the-moment thing, a random decision two years ago. It doesn’t sound like him, though. Doesn’t sound like things he does, like things he’d like to do. 

It doesn’t even sound like the him he thinks he was before the accident. No, Ben had stole himself into their formally shared bedroom one day, while George was out shopping. The places that George didn’t touch were clear. Cold and stiff with dust only barely brushed off the top of a nightstand that had a stack of earmarked books that Ben didn’t know he was in the processes of reading. A drawer filled with everything you expect from a bedside drawer: cough drops, rubber-bands, pens, condoms, scribbled-on notepads. Even the closet and the dresser, half-emptied from when George dropped his clothes off, was separated by weather and formality. The bathroom counter had shaving cream, mouthwash, and hair gel in neat little rows all on one side. It was mirrored in different brands, and looking more recently-used on the other side. It wasn’t regimented, but it was dutifully organized. Lovingly arranged to make the most out of the space. That was the type of person he was. And that might not have been the person George fell in love with, but it certainly was the one he asked to marry him. 

Not the one with stacks of dirty dishes on the nightstand in the guest bedroom who can barely remember if he’s supposed to back in for another exam next Wednesday or this Wednesday. 

Ben stares at the picture for another moment before setting it aside. George really isn’t the only stranger in the house, he thinks, as he picks up another. It’s like contending with a ghost. He doesn’t know what he’s losing to, but he’s losing.. He scoops up the rest of the photos, shuffling them down into some sort of pseudo-organized pile before tucking them under the cover of the album. He picks the whole thing up, and retreats back to his room.

When the sun fully rises, he’s already back in the kitchen, only this time more than prepared, wielding a cup of coffee and balancing a stack of pancakes on a plate all the way to the table. He had started with the photos in the pile in the room, going through them again and again  sorting them into three distinct piles: things he doesn’t remember at all, things he might remember, things he thinks he does remember. When he ran out of those photos, most of them sitting in the pile he doesn’t remember no matter how hard he tries, he started pulling others from behind their plastic protectors and continuing on until he was sitting there, staring a picture of George, this time by himself, sprawled out on a bed that Ben doesn’t recognize. He’s got an arm tossed over his eyes, his shirt riding up high on his stomach. 

Staring at it, he feels a little amused. Lips curling a little into what feels like it might be the beginnings of a smile. He doesn’t even jump when the floor in the hallway creaks under George’s feet. 

“Are you hungover?” Ben asks, a little struck by the thought. 

George only pauses, halfway through his morning shuffle to the kitchen. “Now? No, I am not hungover, I just woke up.” 

“No! No, I mean here. Were you hungover in this picture?” He flicks it around and George actually looks over at what Ben’s doing. He blinks a few times, then scrubs a hand over his face, leaning in and squinting at it.

“Yes,” he decides after a second. “We were visiting your family in Setauket, we went to see a few of your old friends, we got a few drinks.”

“A few?”

“Perhaps more than a few. You took that because you were making fun of me.”

Ben chews his lip. He can remember more, he thinks, just feelings. A sort of building coil of heat wrapping around and around itself, chewing on its own tail like the Oroborus of sensation. It seems stupid to ask, but it seems even stupider that Ben’s afraid of asking. “Did we have sex?”

Another long pause, this time, with George’s hand hovering over the hand of the coffee pot. “Are you speaking generally or of a specific instance?” He asks, as delicately as Ben thinks he can. 

“In this hotel room. That trip. Did we?”

“We did. A few times,,” he confirms, while fixing himself a cup of coffee from the pot Ben had already made. “Not the night before that, or the morning, though.” 

Ben examines the photo, shifting a little uncomfortably in his seat. It’s like something he both shouldn’t be allowed to know, and things he desperately does. “Do we… a lot?”

George hovers at the edge of the table, fixing Ben with a look that he hasn’t quite been able to unpuzzle yet. He drinks from his mug, looking towards the doorway, ostensibly to avoid having this conversation, but eventually George runs out of stalling techniques and lands on: “I don’t think…any more or less than a respectable amount. It depended though, on if either one of us were particularly busy, or if we were on vacation. May I ask why you’re curious?”

Ben just shrugs, flicking the picture around in his fingers again. “Just am.”

Maybe commentary like that isn’t so far out of the other Ben’s wheelhouse, because George just huffs a breath through his nose and accepts it. “How did you know?”

“That we had sex in that hotel?”

“Yeah.” George pulls a chair out tentatively from the table, settling in and watching as Ben set the photo down onto the smallest stacks: things he thinks he remembers. “And what are these?”

“I don’t know how I knew. I just saw it and thought that’s what was happening.” It’s an easy, simple explanation. It doesn’t explain the surge of foreign affection that rolled around in his gut, or the way Ben is sure he knows what color the towels in that hotel were but he only knows he knows he doesn’t know what it was. It’s hard to explain, and it’s hard to explain why it’s hard to explain and Ben, feeling a sudden twisting in his gut. Like dread knotted with anxiety and fear. He rubs across the bottom of his fingers again, pinching his lips down into a frown. 

“You don’t have to tell me,” George reminds him, rather suddenly. 

Ben tries to shake the sensation off, but it won’t go away. It sits, swollen in his throat. But it’s too difficult to manage, to hard to unpack, so he defaults back to his safest option and ignores it. “I just, uh, this is  system I’ve been working on for the past...nine hours. This pile--” he taps the biggest one “--is things that I don’t remember. At all. This one is things that I might, or I just remember that you told me about them. This one is things I think I remember.” Once he gestures to the final stack, small and thin, George moves as if going to pick it up.

He waits for Ben’s nod to do so. He stares at the table, eyes flickering up every once in awhile to try to read George’s expression before going right back down. 

“You remember a lot of going to see your family,” he points after, after going through about half the photos. “Some things from when we were in Hawaii.”

“I remember a lot of sand, actually. Like sand in places no human being should have sand? Does that sound familiar?”

“Very,” he hums, once he gets back down to the end. “Do you have a lot left in this thing?” He taps the edge of the photo album in emphasis. 

“I’ve got like, a fourth to go still. Is this the only one we have?”

George pauses at the question, his face twisting up in one of those rare pictures of real expression. Ben isn’t so great at reading him; apparently he used to be phenomenal at it, but that went away with everything else. Maybe it’s because he spent all night staring at pictures of him and George, or maybe it’s just a month of practice, but he can make up a flicker of conflicted guilt. “I can get another one.” He says, finally just looking down at the photo album. “When you didn’t recognize me in the hospital, I had this one made. I thought maybe having something to hold onto instead of just scrolling through your tablet would be helpful. This way you could take your time with a few photographs instead of all of them at once. They were all your favorite pictures or trips.” 

_ Oh _ . Again, it’s really the only thing he can think. He just thought this was another memento. Another thing George scrounged up to try to force the memories back into his head. But no, he’d gone out and had this made for Ben’s own benefit. Cherry picked events and vacations and photos with him in mind. 

He sucks in a breath, sharp and hard and he knows what he wants to say. He wants to say  _ I heard you on the phone.  _ He wants to say  _ I’m sorry I’m such a douchebag.  _ He wants to say,  _ I’m sorry I don’t remember.  _ He wants to say everything he’s wanted to say for the last month crammed into one, apologies for his quick-flash temper, apologies for how frustrated he gets, apologies for everything at once but the words just don’t come out. They freeze and lock up in his throat and he tries to swallow around them. 

George is looking at him with a world of expectation. 

He has to say something. “Uhm,” is the very dignified start, “George, is there something different about my hand?”

“I’m sorry?”

He holds up his left hand, the one he’s been fidgeting with whenever he was more stressed than usual. There’s a constantly raw-red little mark from where he scratched the base of his fingers and rubbed them and twisted his hand around them. He does it again, with George’s watchful eyes over him. “I just -- I keep fiddling with it like I’m missing something. And I don’t know what it is and I was wondering if something was just different with it? It’s really annoying and I just don’t know what’s wrong with it.”

Slowly, George’s expression changes again and this time Ben can read it clear as ever. He takes the questioned hand in his own. They fit together so well. If there had been an opportunity for him to notice, a moment where he wasn’t pushing George away, he’d ignored it before. George’s warm, rough hand was careful around his own, staying still as Ben examined the differences between them. The the scars on his own knuckles and the freckles on the back of George’s. Somehow, Ben remembers. He remembers what he’s missing. It’s just a small and fragile piece, but he clings to it nonetheless. He knows what it looks like, a band of silver with three small diamonds embedded at the top, their initials engraved on the inside. He knows what it feels like to wear it, what it felt like the first time he did.

He doesn’t say it, doesn’t ask George to get it so he can see for himself and prove that he knows, but he feels George’s hands tighten around his own for just a second. They just stay there for a moment, quietly together with a mountain of photographs between them. 

It doesn’t change much. Oh really, Ben supposes, it doesn’t change anything. But, even weeks later when Ben is leaning against the kitchen doorway, twisting his engagement ring around his finger while he watches George cook without complaint, it makes it feel a little easier.

 

**Author's Note:**

> If this fic looked familiar, please don't @ me. I actually conceived of this idea for benwash fic, then legit used it a year and a half ago for a fucking creative writing class. I edited it, expanded it, and changed everything because I'm the fucking worst. 
> 
> I'm on [tumblr](http://tooeasilyconsidered.tumblr.com/) thinking of ways to make sex in this fic gooey and schmoozy


End file.
